Excerpt from Eli W. Caruthers’s “Richard Hugg King and His Times” (ca. 1808)
“As for jerking, dancing, & barking, they were only fungi, which grew out of the revival in its state of decay & ought never to be imputed to the work itself….”
Excerpts from the Autobiography of Rev. James B. Finley (ca. 1808)
“These strange exercises that have excited so much wonder in the western country came in toward the last of the revival, and were, in the estimation of some of the more pious, the chaff of the work. Now it was that the humiliating and often disgusting exercises of dancing, laughing, jerking, barking like dogs, or howling like wolves, and rolling on the ground, manifested themselves….”
Excerpt from the Minutes of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (May 24, 1809)
“[B]odily agitations, where they had appeared, have almost wholly subsided, and have given place to calm inquiry into the great and leading doctrines of the gospel….”
Excerpts from Joseph Thomas’s Life of the Pilgrim (November 10, 1810–May 5, 1811)
“[T]he subjects of this work receive no damage or injury whatever, and the most of them are exceedingly happy when they are thus exercised…. One may ask…, can they not be happy in religion and have the jirks?”
Thomas Cleland’s Published Letter on “Bodily Affections” (ca. 1812–1824)
“The phenomenon of…suddenly falling or sinking down, under religious exercises, has not been uncommon in times of great excitement…. But the bodily agitation called the jerks is a very different affection….”
